Melbourne: five crucial decisions the Demons need to make

Melbourne went down to another heavy defeat against Collingwood on Monday. Photograph: Joe Castro/AAP

1) Do something about the midfield mess

The AFL does not currently have an award for the player who most regularly carries an entire midfield. If they did, Nathan Jones would be a hot favourite for his second consecutive gong. The sight of Jones crashing, bullocking and willing his way through two hours of futile pain has surely been a heartening, though emblematic sight for Dees supporters during this wretched season. He needs help. They need help.

Jack Viney already has the physique of a kouros if not the guile of Hermes and will need time to develop, so the recruiting focus has to be on adding immediate midfield grunt, plain and simple. The club is actually reasonably well stocked with both reliable tall defenders and key forward targets; the potential teaming of Mitch Clark with giant youngster Jesse Hogan and Chris Dawes is exciting. Knowing this, it remains puzzling why they lured the largely unproven Cameron Pedersen across from North Melbourne on a three-year deal. Either way, it’s getting it to them that is the main problem.

If Melbourne doesn’t use their early picks at the next draft on midfielders, supporter reactions at the carnival of Tom Scully hate last year will seem like a tea party.

2) Bring in the Ox

The time has come for the club to do something about the disconnect between their fans and the club administration. David Schwarz could be a part of that process. A club legend, Schwarz has the ear of many Melbourne supporters through his drive-time radio presence on SEN. He is more connected with the rank and file fan than nearly anyone in the game. He also loves the club and feels strongly about the plight it finds itself in.

Schwarz won’t win the club any games, he won’t bring them business acumen, but in times of crisis like this it’s not the worst idea to have a face that supporters trust and respect. It is impossible to fill the giant hole in the club’s heart that they lost with the passing of Jim Stynes, but Schwarz has a unique skill set that the club desperately lacks. His lack of public support for Mark Neeld notwithstanding, Schwarz wants the club back on track more than anyone. If Neeld goes, Schwarz should make his move to help out.

Contrary to cliché, Melbourne has a passionate and knowledgeable supporter base that cares deeply about their team. Melbourne need to realise how badly they need those supporters to sign on and remain members. The club need to show them some love.

3) Bin the recycled players but still think ‘mature’

Shannon Byrnes, David Rodan and Cameron Pedersen did not cost Melbourne anything significant at the trade table, that much is true. Of the three, Byrnes has probably offered the most on the field. Yet if it came to it you’d struggle to name a single other club that would have benefitted from taking them on. It’s not the hallmark of successful sides and recent football history is stocked with examples of clubs who followed this path and have gone nowhere. It stymies the development of young players and at best speaks of a club papering over cracks.

On the other hand, it’s easy to look at the success other clubs have had with mature-age recruits and conclude that such players are everywhere in lower leagues. They’re not, obviously, but the emergence of Michael Hibberd, Brett Goodes, Sam Dwyer and Dayne Zorko shows that they are out there in significant numbers. Melbourne need to find those players more than any other club does right now. That sounds like an oversimplification but it’s an area of recruiting that good clubs focus on and succeed at. It carries lower risks and adds to the depth of your playing list, both of which should be priorities for Melbourne.

4) Commit to the vision of a proven coach

Whether Neeld stays or goes, and it looks increasingly like he’ll be gone at season’s end, there is a fundamental problem with the expectations placed on him and any potential successor. On one hand, the football world has acknowledged that Neeld walked into a long term project that had all the makings of a very long haul. But football supporters, especially success-starved ones, hate hearing that. Ask Terry Wallace. On the other hand, Neeld was given a three year contract and the club has since been savaged for offering him even this length of tenure. So to round that up, the poor bloke has basically been asked to do a five year job in two years. It’s not just Melbourne’s midfield numbers that don’t add up.

The experiences of Dean Bailey should have served as ample warning for Neeld as to what he was in for, as will his for whoever ends up following him. Putting aside the financially disastrous process of paying out Neeld’s third year, whoever ends up in the position needs to be clear on the expectations that are placed on them. A muted approach to the way those plans are communicated may also help; no-one needs a grandiose mission statement hovering over them.

5) Arrested development

When Don McLardy foretold serious changes to Melbourne’s football department last week, you couldn’t help but think of perennial whipping boy Jack Watts. Watts was widely regarded as the best young player in the country when he was taken with the No1 pick of the 2008 Draft and the club made the exact same choice that countless others would have in their position. But at this point, you have to seriously question the development work that the club has put into Watts and several of his younger colleagues. We live in an unprecedented age of football statistics but there is not yet one devised to measure the impact of playing at Melbourne on a footballer’s fragile psyche.

Lucas Cook was taken as a first-round draft pick and delisted within two years, followed out the door by another first-rounder, Jordan Gysberts. They weren’t the only young players who Melbourne failed to extract anything meaningful from. If Melbourne do end up going in a different coaching direction at the end of 2013, the rapid development of the younger brigade in Mark Williams’s time at Greater Western Sydney is perhaps the most glowing endorsement of his credentials to stop this slide at Melbourne. At the moment, the club remains a kind of footballing Bermuda triangle, talented youngsters sailing in without a care in the world before being spat out the other end in a crumpled, dispirited heap. That needs to change and fast.

Developing players is one thing, but retaining them is another. Out of the wreckage of this year, Melbourne must ensure they keep players like James Frawley and Jeremy Howe, who will be on the radar of several other clubs. Losing players of this calibre has long been a problem for Melbourne, from Jeff Farmer and Scott Thompson through to Jared Rivers last year. They can’t afford to lose Frawley and Howe, both of whom have prospered against a formidable tide. In the here and now, that remains a much more valuable currency than the spectre of high draft picks.

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